Art. 425.Preclusion By Judgment

Article 425 sets Louisiana's rule against claim-splitting. When a dispute arises out of one transaction or occurrence, a single contract gone wrong, one accident, one course of dealing, a party must bring every cause of action arising from it in that same lawsuit. Holding one claim back to file later, after the first suit ends, generally is not an option: the judgment in the first suit forecloses claims that could have been asserted in it.

The rule pushes litigants toward one full airing of a dispute rather than repeat rounds of litigation over the same underlying events. It rewards a plaintiff who thinks through everything the transaction might support before filing, and it protects a defendant from being sued again and again over the same events.

Family law gets carved out. A divorce action, a request to resolve the matters that come with it such as custody or support, a claim for contribution toward a spouse's education or training, and a later action to partition community property and settle claims between spouses can proceed as separate lawsuits without running into this rule. Louisiana recognizes that these matters often can't, or shouldn't, all be resolved in a single proceeding.